Slate's Fred Kaplan will speak on Russian-American hacking at Iowa State April 18

AMES, Iowa -- Slate magazine's national security columnist, who has written a history of cyberwarfare, will speak at Iowa State University.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan will present "Cyber-Sabotage: The History and Politics of Russian-American Hacking" at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 18, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His talk is free and open to the public.

Book cover

Kaplan's 2016 book "Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War" is the untold story of the computer scientists, military officers, policymakers and spies who devised and employed a new form of warfare. The book is described as "a remarkable piece of reporting" by journalist Ted Koppel, and a "book that grips, informs and alarms" by spy novelist John le Carré.

Before joining Slate in 2002 to write the weekly column "War Stories," Kaplan was a correspondent for the Boston Globe, where he won a Pulitzer Prize. He also has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Foreign Affairs. He previously worked as a defense policy advisor in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kaplan is the author of five books, including "Daydream Believers," a scathing critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy initiatives; and "The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War," the inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars who plotted to revolutionize the military to fight a new kind of war against insurgents and terrorists.

Kaplan has a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His presentation is co-sponsored by the College of Engineering, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, computer science department, electrical and computer engineering department, history department, political science department, world languages and cultures department, international studies program, Russian studies program,  World Affairs series and the Committee on Lectures, which is funded by Student Government.

More information on ISU lectures is available online, or by calling 515-294-9935.